Jack and Diane

The following short story first appeared in Interesting Tales of Other People's Woe, a collection of fiction by Damon Stewart (2014).

It was a late Tuesday morning and Slappy’s Diner had emptied of the farmers, truckers, travelers, and bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, SUNY Morrisville students who had wandered in for breakfast: the eggs and bacon or sausage, the pancakes, or the “Slappy Special” (pancakes, eggs and bacon or sausage).

Sitting in a booth next to the window, Diane rested her chin in one hand while twirling her hair with the other, watching Jack upend a bottle of Frank’s Red Hot sauce over his scrambled eggs. The sun was shining in through the windows that overlooked Rt. 20, adding a squint to her frown that grew with each thick drop of the bright red liquid onto the steaming yellow and white mass.

Jack pushed an errant lock of graying hair out of his face, oblivious to her stare. The sun made him squint too, and Diane looked at the lines extending from his eyes. He didn’t quite look his age, she thought with a mixture of pride and mild annoyance. All he’d been through and he still managed to convey a sense of youth, forty going on thirty-two. She hoped she was holding it together as well. She knew she was, but she had to work at it. Jack just … was Jack.

Jesus, she thought as he kept shaking the bottle over his eggs, why don’t you just pour gasoline on them, set them on fire, and shovel ‘em down the hatch? God, his digestive tract must be one long series of scar tissue. She shook her head.

“Want some?” Jack asked, looking up as he pushed his black-framed glasses up his nose.

“No thanks, Babe,” Diane said, smiling. Despite the years of her giving the same answer, he still always asked. But she appreciated the fact that he did, she knew it was a sincere offer. He just couldn’t quite comprehend how she could not like hot sauce on her eggs, as if he was convinced that for the past two decades she had just forgotten that she liked it, and it was only a matter of time and repeatedly asking until she’d remember that indeed, she actually did like hot sauce on her eggs. By Golly.

The waitress approached. “More coffee, hon?”

“Thank you Miranda,” Diane said, nodding.

Jack looked at her for a moment before shaking his head. “Jesus. You’re going to burn a hole in your stomach.” He turned to look up at the waitress. “Has she drank the whole pot yet? You’re going to have to cut her off soon.”

“Jack,” Diane replied softly, “it keeps me going. You know that.” She turned and dipped her head to hide one eye from Miranda and winked at him. For added emphasis, she extended her leg and rubbed her foot on his shin.

She saw the flicker in his eyes. They still had it, even after all these years, even in the wake of all the jobs and the moves, new friends, old friends and split friends. Even in the wake of Jack.

Why not, she thought. We’ve got nothing else going on today. An afternoon spent in bed, screwing, drinking coffee and watching movies with the shades pulled down would be just the thing. Defy the world, or at least their immediate circumstances.

Then a twinge, as she remembered the suitcase sitting in the back of the closet, underneath a pile of clothes. The one she’d packed the night before, while Jack was out for his evening walk. The one that she had been mentally packing since two weeks ago when he first told her the news, that his contract was up at the end of the Spring semester and the college had, somewhat predictably, decided not to renew it for the Fall semester.

“I’m sorry, babe,” he had said, “I guess it’s time to move again.”

She knew it was time to move, oh she agreed with that all right, but the move she had in mind was from Jack, not with him. Not anymore.

Diane sighed as she stared out the window at their car, a ten year old Chevy Caprice. He could keep the car, she was going to take the Greyhound to Syracuse, then a flight to Boston. She had made arrangements to live with a friend, a woman with a rich, stable husband and an extra bedroom. Several bedrooms, in fact, and, she knew, a bathroom for each.

She noticed he was staring at her. “Zoning?” he asked.

“Just thinking,” she said.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get by.”

“Mmm,” she replied. They had always gotten by. It was overrated. Jack’s adjuncting never paid much, not as much as her bartending did, which meant that they always had to find the silver lining in the otherwise gray cloud of the working poor. No mortgage to worry about, true, and she made sure they never let the credit card—her credit card, Jack never had one—get them into trouble. They could always just manage food, rent, utilities, and enough extra cash to keep in motion whatever smoke-spewing pile of disagreeable auto parts they happened to own at any given time. Jack always managed to get the health insurance. Otherwise, they owned very little: some clothes, an old stereo, a virus-riddled pc, basic furniture and several boxes of Jack’s books and music that Diane threatened to toss out every time they moved.

“My God Jack, the Carpenters?” she had asked during one of the moves when she opened the box, thinking it contained dishes. “When was the last time you listened to them? Did you ever listen to them? And if so, why?”

“They’re cool babe. In a kitschy kind of way,” he had replied.

But that album was in her suitcase now. On a whim, just before Jack got home, she pulled it out of the box. She thought that someday she’d listen to it and think of Jack.

She actually had gone and thrown out a crate of moldering science fiction paperbacks he’d had since they first met. She had never seen him read or even remove any from the milk crate he’d kept them in. Apartment ballast, he jokingly called them, but two moves ago she hid them under an old carpet they had left on the curb. He still hadn’t noticed.

A young woman pulled up to the diner in front of their window and got out of the car. She opened the back door, leaned in and after a minute of fussing, backed out with a baby in her arms.

Watching them, Diane felt a tug. Something, loss or anger or both, she didn’t know. She was leaving Jack, but not much else. A few possessions, a couple of friends. But no babies, no children.

The day, several years ago, after the tests: the doctor had asked, “Have you thought about adoption?”

She and Jack, sitting in the doctor’s office and absorbing the news, nodded thoughtfully at the suggestion. Jack took the card from the agency that the doctor slid across his desk and pretended to read it.

But they never spoke about it, they didn’t need to. Until Jack held down a steady job, at the very least, no one was ever going to let them adopt a child, and that was assuming—a big assumption—that they wouldn’t discover why Jack had such trouble keeping a job in the past. And even if they somehow remained ignorant of that particular 800 pound gorilla swinging through the trees of his personal history, she doubted they could afford the whole deal anyway.

She had some money now, though, had stashed it in the suitcase. A lot of it, actually. Tips, skimmed paychecks, whatever she could save. Originally it was a slush fund for a trip to Paris, romance and the like, the wrinkled bills crammed into the case of a broken vacuum, a safe place where Jack would never look, not even back in the day when he’d feverishly scour the apartment for cash, change, the stereo or the TV. Well, not the whole stereo, he only sold the cassette player (“real rock is played on records, baby,” he said later). They went through three TV sets. As for her jewelry, she forgave him for all but the claddagh ring her mother had given her a long time ago. Even now, the thought of that one generated a wisp of anger.

Eventually it became emergency money, for bail, the ER, or rehab, wherever Jack ended up first, but somehow it was never needed.

Then it became a way out.

She was confident she’d be able to start over again somewhere else. She’d been bartending for almost twenty years now. You could count on death, she thought, and taxes, and also that almost every town in the country has a bar that is looking for help. The tips were usually good and she could still draw the undivided attention of the boys (and a few girls).

It was getting old though, it had been old for a long time. She had gotten a degree in Business Communications, but never quite found regular work. At first, when Jack was in grad school, there seemed no need to hurry to a career, tending bar was fun and helped pay the rent. The plan was to wait for Jack to get his first teaching job, then look for real work in whatever town they settled in.

But it never quite materialized, and the career—whatever it was to be—receded into the distance; it wasn’t even an active dream anymore. She was too old to start something new, something that would bring in real money, a bonus, a retirement plan or stock options. Free drinks and rancid popcorn were the extent of her fringes, she thought bitterly.

Got to keep my perspective, she thought. I’m doing something about all this. Maybe the high-end perks are gone, but it’s not too late to hold out for a job with regular hours. Health insurance and working with people her own age. Discussions about the weather, the best vacation destinations, or how to handle a kitchen remodeling project.

For a moment, she pictured Jack holding a hammer, and almost laughed.

At 38, she was well-versed in the personal exploits of Lil’ Wayne, could sing along with Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe,” knew enough to be flattered when told, “you got the cake,” and was slowly but steadily going deaf from the years of being subjected to music blasting out of sound systems of countless happy hour celebrations in countless college towns throughout New York.

And one of these days, some wisecracking college boy—there were so, so many of them—was going to get a pitcher full of whatever cheap squirrel-piss she was serving cracked over his stupid, leering head, so help her God.

She took a breath. No point getting worked up now.

Jack called out to the waitress, “Miranda, is the paper here?”

“Sure,” Miranda said, and brought it over from a nearby table. Jack unfolded it, pulled out the last section and spread it out before him.

“Classifieds?”

Diane asked.

“Why not?”

“Well, I don’t think the colleges put ads in the paper—or at least that paper—for jobs, hon. Not your kind anyway.”

Jack nodded. “Maybe it’s time I looked for something else anyway.”

Diane turned back to look out the window. A semi was crawling its way up the hill past the restaurant, backing up traffic behind it. “DLM, Ottawa, Ontario,” was written in bright yellow letters on the side, and for a moment Diane felt the urge to run out and jump in the cab. Leave it all behind, even the suitcase and cash and whatever possessions she had bothered to pack, just beg the driver for a ride, hand him her credit card and tell him to keep it, just get her to Canada.

Jack said, “I know.” Diane spun around to face him. He was staring at her, a mixture of sorrow and mild amusement on his face.

“I always say that,” Jack continued, looking past her at the truck. “Sometimes, though….”

He’s thinking the same thing, she thought. She lowered her eyes and felt a brief flare of hurt, then smiled at her own hypocrisy. There was only one packed suitcase in the apartment.

She doubted—no, she knew—that Jack would never think of leaving her. It just wasn’t in him. Back then, at its worst, he’d get home late at night, out of his mind. He’d come straight to bed, hold her tight, his heart pounding and too much sweat for not much going on, but his head pressed to hers and he’d whisper, “I love you, I love you,” over and over again. It was, she thought, the only positive thing about the coke. He didn’t do that anymore.

The pen in his hand was poised over the newspaper, a circle drawn around a small ad. She glanced at his face; he was still looking out the window. She leaned forward to see what he had marked. “IT Manager,” it said in bold letters.

He’s losing his mind, she thought. Jack had only barely mastered the nuances of getting email. Sending it was a project for some other time.

Until he broke the news, she allowed herself to hope that this job might last for a while. Jack had been straight for two years and it was clear that he had finally attained some balance. She quickly scanned his face for signs of strain, but there was only the usual lost-in-the-moment-Jack, his attention focused on the immediate thing in front of him. She wondered how long it would take him to notice if she spontaneously combusted.

Morrisville had hired him as the result of probably the last favor from an old friend from downstate. Former best friend, actually, before some unpleasantness involving the friend’s dog and Jack’s propensity to drive too fast through residential neighborhoods. His friend’s latest novel, a Pulitzer contender, had provided him the stature to call up Chairs of English Departments at other colleges and ask if they’d hire Jack, despite his reputation. Or, to Jack’s credit, with what was left of it.

Jack had some promise at one time, that and money, due to a movie that was made based on a poem he’d written a few years out of grad school. He didn’t really consider himself a poet and wrote only occasionally, but he’d hit the jackpot on this one, a moving account about a young man’s struggle with LSD, and the poem’s publication in the New Yorker inspired a screenwriter. Which in turn led to a film of some critical acclaim, and almost complete anonymity amongst audiences.

But in academic circles, his fame was complete, as the author of the only modern poem that had been converted to the most significant medium of the day. And which made said author a bucket load of money to boot, for a change.

That was the peak, she thought, remembering the parties, a few interviews, and the expectations that it was only the beginning. She’d packed two reviews of the movie and a photo of her and Jack standing with the film’s star, a swimsuit model who actually was a very good actress despite the burden of her former profession. But the decline was gentle, steady, and as unstoppable as the tide. If, of course, the tide was composed of coca extract with traces of whiskey and vodka. Diane shook her head, causing Jack to glance up from his review of the opportunities in the high tech field.

He had been hired as an assistant producer and although he had done little on the movie, he was paid very well. After its release, he had gotten a job as an assistant professor at Columbia, and kept getting invited to parties. Eventually he went to as many without her as with her, coming home too drunk, stoned, high or generally twisted to make much sense, even if he did seem to want to tell her everything he did that day. Twice.

Over time, classes were increasingly missed, slept through, forgotten or simply deemed less important than what he was snorting at the time. His fame ebbed, and after a few years, it was suggested that his genius might be needed elsewhere.

They worked their way upstate; another assistant professor position at Pace (two years; the last straw an unapproved, week long mid-semester “sabbatical” at some shithole in the Bronx where she finally found him and dragged him away from the threat of exactly one gun and two knives); Bard (two years; campus security had found him hunched over his desk with, literally, a straw up his nose. No charges if he left quickly and quietly); SUNY Albany, Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, SUNY Alfred, Colgate, SUNY Delhi (two, two, one, one, one; coke, coke, lingering effects of coke, bad luck, stupidity).

His recovery came about abruptly. There was no “incident” as such, not like with everyone else she’d heard or read about. No car accident, OD, incarceration, girlfriend or even a particular job firing that did it.

It was late summer, and Jack had finished teaching a summer course at St. Lawrence University, way up in northern New York. It didn’t look like he’d get renewed for the fall semester. But they had some cash saved and lived under the reign of a sympathetic landlord, so they decided to stay put in the village until he found something else.

To this day, she didn’t know what it was. He’d been out the night before with a grad student and some townies, got in late as he usually did, mumbled sweet ramblings in her ear, and passed out. She thought he said something like, “witches.” The next morning, he just literally got out of bed, still smelling of sour whiskey, and said, “I’ve got to stop.” She had doubted if he was straight at the very moment. He threw on some crusty jeans and a stained “Warren Zevon,” t-shirt and walked out of the house, not to return until dinner.

Through September and October, he left the house every morning and spent the day walking along the county roads that led out of the village. “Walking and thinking,” he told her the second day. That was all she got from him, but she didn’t want to mess up his strange and abrupt recovery, so she stopped asking questions.

Jack more or less stayed straight ever since. And every day he still went for a walk, though rarely all day anymore.

It sounded therapeutic. In theory she thought it would be good for her too, but she never could seem to get the energy to walk with him. Not after a late night on the job. Maybe in her next life, the one that waited at the mouth of the open suitcase, she’d start walking. Start over, like Jack, and start walking. I’m walking now, she thought.

Even after he cleaned up, Jack’s absentmindedness, or maybe it was just bad luck, at one time somewhat endearing, had caused him almost as much trouble as his nose.

SUNY Alfred. Sleeping through class. It wasn’t fair, she thought. It had been the fall semester, right after he started to get clean. The college had hired him just before classes started and they left St. Lawrence to start over in western New York. Despite his exercise and the obvious improvement in his condition, his body was still adjusting to an untainted regimen. Among other things, he had trouble sleeping at night. But he could sleep just fine, it seemed, during the day.

Colgate. Diane shook her head as she gently rotated her coffee cup in her hands. She loved the village, Hamilton, a picturesque stereotype of a sleepy upstate college town. They lived in an apartment located in the back of a huge stone mansion on the main street. Every morning she’d get up and get coffee and a croissant at a nearby bakery. On warm days, she’d sit on a bench at a small park between the apartment and the bakery and watch traffic while she sipped the coffee. She didn’t make many friends, but it seemed that everyone was generally nice.

She had thought about going back. But she wouldn’t have a free place to stay while looking for work, and didn’t dare burn up her savings on the hope that something would come along. Maybe if she was able to save more in Boston she’d try to go back.

Jack’s termination wasn’t entirely his fault. A fellow adjunct/abuser by the name of Pete Holmes went on a two-day bender and thought he’d swing by to pay Jack a visit. Jack decided he’d try and talk the guy out of his problem by convincing him to use the “walk in the woods” therapy.

Pete also happened to be a pilot who enjoyed flying with a good buzz on, and despite the obvious danger, Jack accompanied him to the local airfield (literally a field) and went up in the plane with him, thinking that it would be a good opportunity to get Pete to focus on what he was saying.

They ended up in Las Vegas, with no way home. It turned out that Pete could fly a plane just fine while drunk, but couldn’t maneuver a rented Taurus out of a parking lot without hitting three parked cars and a security guard. Diane had just enough money to wire Jack bus fare; Pete’s fate remained in the hands of the local constabulary. The trip back to Hamilton took three days, the same three days he was supposed to be giving finals, and the ruckus that ensued left Jack without an invitation to come back.

There were real lapses as well, of course, including one spectacular one when they were living in Cleveland. It was the weekend that The Who were inducted into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame and Jack, after being given an unusually generous amount of Bolivia’s finest from an admiring student, had filched Diane’s credit card and bought a scooter. He then paid a ridiculous amount of money for a welder to attach a bunch of mirrors to the thing in honor of “Quadrophenia,” and proceeded to drive to the Hall of Fame. Coked to the gills and singing selections from “Who’s Next” and “Face Dances” at the top of his lungs, he was riding down the wrong side of the road at noon in downtown Cleveland when,according to what he later told police, he was suddenly “blinded by the sun reflecting off all those fucking mirrors,” and ran into the back of a pickup truck that was overloaded with hay bales. It was widely assumed that the nature of such cargo accounted for his continued presence among the living and independently mobile. No hospital, no jail, although for a long time, no license.

By the time he got a job at SUNY Delhi, he had more or less stabilized. But his newfound acquaintance with reality required some getting used to, and Jack was unable to measure his perspective.

Hence the flag-burning incident. Jack, eager to do his part in the faculty’s efforts to oppose some rumored staff cuts, decided to stage a one-man protest.

But Jack’s limited PR skills were not up to the task, as the controversy he planned failed to materialize. In no small part because he hadn’t bothered to tell anyone what he was doing, nor had he given any thought to the time and venue, conducting the demonstration at 7:45 am on a Monday morning in front of the administration building.

Despite the lack of any press, a crowd, or even a few disinterested strangers, Jack went through with it, unfolding the pillowcase-sized Old Glory he’d purchased from a Wal-Mart and lighting it up as he held it aloft with one hand and reading from notes that he held in the other hand.

He soon had lost his place in his prepared ramblings, yet still impressed himself enough to keep barreling ahead in an impassioned manner, having managed to work in Nathan Hale, Ronald Reagan (for irony’s sake) and a wildly inaccurate account of the Mexican Revolution. His voice shaking with outrage, he waived the blazing flag around with increasing vigor until he realized that his sleeve was on fire.

With a yelp he tossed the flag to the ground. Said piece of ground being occupied by a cat that, up to that point, had been Jack’s only sentient audience, but whose attention had drifted to a chipmunk in a nearby tree. The cat, not caring about Poncho Villa’s attack on the Alamo and thus focused on the rodent, never saw the flaming colors until it was nearly too late.

It was at that moment that two half-awake freshmen decided to take a look out their dorm window and saw what was later termed, “a savage attack on a kitten.” Since one of the freshmen was a new member of the local chapter of PETA, a fuss resulted.

Diane paused for a moment. Jack had lit the flag with the lighter he’d gotten her as a birthday present, back when she used to smoke. It was engraved, “I loved you even before I met you. Jack.” It still meant a lot to her, but she realized now that she forgot to pack it.

She shook her head; it made her cry when he gave it to her, and even now, on the verge of this, it brought something back. She’d have to get it before she left.

The controversy that Jack had in fact managed to generate resulted in beer-fueled demonstrations outside the same administration office, only this time complete with crowds and press. In the end, he had to publicly apologize, and the college had to promise free medical care to any stray animals brought to its veterinary science center.

“Goddamn freaks,” he later said of the students, “Animal rights? What about our imperialist foreign policy? The plight of the urban—hell, the rural too—poor? World hunger. Racism. Who,” and he pointed a finger at Diane for emphasis, “gives a shit about cats? These kids, they have no perspective. They’re to the militant left of Marx! Show me where in Das Kapital Marx wrote anything about how cats will play a role in the rev-o-fucking-lution!”

“Jack, please calm down,” Diane pleaded from across the Faculty Chair’s dinner table, where they were supposed to be enjoying the department’s annual fall dinner. This was a week after things had quieted, but Jack, although free of any alcohol or drugs, had been drinking the Chair’s imported espresso all night and was wired.

“For all I know,” he continued, oblivious to the stares of his colleagues, “Marx himself was the one who figured out that you can ram an electrode up a weasel’s ass to get an unspoiled pelt. Even the commies wanted good fur coats to stay warm.”

It was shortly thereafter that the Dean, sensing an opportunity to tactically dispose of a loose cannon from the faculty deck, decided that perhaps the admin folks were right in that exactly one job cut was for the greater good. Jack and Diane were on the road again the next semester.

The lighter, Diane thought. It was either in her top dresser drawer, or in a small wooden box that sat on the bookshelf.

“What about Mexico?” Jack asked, startling her.

“What?”

“Mexico,” he said. “Maybe I can find some expat school down there, teach English Lit to diplomats’ kids.”

“Sounds good to me,” she answered, trying to keep the flatness out of her voice. Maybe he was kidding, maybe he wasn’t, but she didn’t want to talk about the future with him. Not now. Suddenly she felt an urge to cry and looked away.

“Yeah, Mexico,” Jack mumbled, and out of the corner of her eye she saw he had returned to his perusal of the classifieds.

Last year, Jack had gotten the adjunct job here at Morrisville. Diane, determined not to let him repeat past mistakes, carefully monitored his activities throughout the semester, making it a point to ask about his day, his relationship to the faculty, his plans for the weekend.

He had done well. She attended a few parties with him, and it was clear he got along well with his fellow teachers. He stayed out of trouble, coming home after class, going for his walk and reading or preparing for the next day. On weekends they went for drives, attended plays by the school’s drama department, went to basketball games (one of Jack’s students was on the team), or occasionally drove to Syracuse for lunch.

The students liked him too. Every now and then she’d stop by his class and watch him teach. He still loved it, anyone could see, and now, thinking about how he looked when he was in front of a class, pacing back and forth, making jokes, drawing the students out of their shells, trying his best to bring them into his world, she felt it, whatever it was that had faded. The feeling was here now though, and although she knew it would fade again, she smiled, glancing at him and shaking her head. Jack. What am I going to do without you?

“Mr. DeLaney, yeah, the dude’s all right,” one student had told her last week after she asked him what he thought of Jack. She was bartending in “The Matador,” the local college bar, and noticed that the kid was carrying Jack’s required reading as he ordered a Long Island Iced Tea.

“I mean, some of this shit is pretty hard, and who cares anyway? But DeLaney will walk you through it, know what I mean? He’s got a sense of humor too; he’s a funny fucker.” The kid paused as he scanned the room, presumably looking for fellow Long Island Iced Tea drinkers, then looked back at Diane. “That, and his classes don’t necessarily start on time, so you got some slack. Sometimes he’ll wind it up early, too.” The kid glanced up from his careful study of Diane’s breasts. “You his girlfriend?”

“Wife. That’ll be five bucks,” she said. The boy’s eyes dived to her chest again. She glanced at a pitcher sitting on the counter below the bar and entertained a thought.

“Wow,” he said, “He is definitely doing all right.” The kid, skull intact, left a two dollar tip.

Jack’s favorite class was creative writing. Among the techniques he used to coax stories out of the students was to designate a theme class once or twice a semester. Students would write a short story related to a stated topic or idea, then read and explain the story in class. Judging from the reaction of students at previous schools, Diane knew it was a popular exercise.

“It always gets ‘em going,” he had explained to Diane, describing the first theme, “All messed up.”

“You get the standard stories of drinking, drugging and whoring, although some are pretty intense.”

“Are any true?” He would know.

“Not many,” Jack said. “Mainly regurgitated from movies. For most, anyway.”

“Do you … ever talk about it with the kids who don’t make it up?”

He paused. “Nope. This isn’t therapy, and there isn’t anything useful we can tell each other.”

Here at Morrisville, it was the second theme class that had done him in. By early April, Jack had complained that the kids, “weren’t really trying anymore. I’ve got some good writers, but they just won’t do it, make the effort and say it.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“They won’t open it up. Too much about how things ought to be or might be, not how things are.”

“What about those drug stories?”

“They’re all the same. Different drugs for different generations, I suppose, but the same experiences. Anyone can write about the times they were fucked up. I want ‘em to write about the times they wished they were fucked up.”

“So what are you going to do?” she asked.

“I have an idea,” Jack said, nodding to himself. “I gotta get these guys to put their hearts into it.”

“Well, good luck,” she had said, and turned back to her magazine. She was looking at a cruise ship ad, a glossy photo of a gleaming white, stadium-sized ocean liner sedately sailing on an impossibly blue Caribbean sea.

Now she wished she had stopped dreaming and asked him what he had in mind to get the kids “hearts in it.” She would have talked him out of it.

Jack announced the theme at the next class, “Baring Your Soul,” and, significantly, said that he would participate as well. As Diane later learned from the giggling students who made their way to the Matador, Jack’s expression of soul involved conducting his class in his usual attire of t-shirt, sport coat and scuffed dress boots. This time, however, sans trousers.

“Well, hell, Diane, I didn’t come in any ridiculous tighty-whitey’s, or some perverted crotch-hugging thing,” he later sputtered in defense of his method, “they were a perfectly respectable pair of well-laundered, fully covering boxers. Nice plaid design. I thought it would keep the mood light, on a topic like this, these kids can get into heavy stuff, y’know?” He shook his head. “Christ, if it had been summer and we’d been on a golf course at some faculty outing, I would’ve been complimented on my taste in shorts. For all I know, the goddamned things have pockets.”

But no one saw any pockets and word got around. Two days after the class, Jack was summoned to the President’s office, to explain his teaching style. The President offered an explanation too, on the topic of Jack’s freedom to pursue another job next semester.

So here they were. June had passed and between Jack’s final check and some rather generous tips Diane had collected from the outgoing senior class, they managed to have July’s rent and bills covered. August, however, was another matter, and they were going to have to figure out their next move.

Jack’s going to have to figure out his next move, Diane corrected herself. She already had a move in mind. Hard as it may be.

A friend had once said to Diane, “Leave him, dear. He’s a nice man, but he just isn’t going to make it. You’re going to be bartending all your life if you stay with him.” She paused, this woman with a divorce under her belt and on the cusp of another, who lived in a large house, had drinks with friends every Thursday at four in the afternoon, and vacationed in Europe and Hong Kong, and then said, “You’ll get tired. Eventually. You’ll decide to move on. But if you’re not careful, it’ll be too late.” Her friend took a long drag on her cigarette, a pull from her martini, and they both stared at the TV above the bar, the name or location of which Diane could no longer remember.

Then, and now: Diane knew he wouldn’t make it. Not in the way they had always hoped. She didn’t know when the end would come, but she knew it would come someday. He was too fragile. Or maybe that was too nice; maybe he was just an overeducated fuck-up.

“Hey Diane,” Jack said, interrupting her reverie as he folded up the paper, “so what do you want to do today? You know, I think today is the perfect day for you and me just to hang out. Screw this job thing, something will come along. The Department Chair told me yesterday he heard there’s an opening in the English Department at Elmira; he’s got a friend there and is going to call the guy next week to see if I can get on the A list.” He studied her face for a moment, then reached over and squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry. We’ve always handled it before. I’ve changed now. It’s been hard, but it’s going to get better. Really. As long as I have you, we’re going to make it.”

Diane sighed again, straining against the tears. They escaped down her face anyway, and suddenly she couldn’t hold it in and began to weep. Jack stood up and sat next to her, whispering, but she couldn’t hear the words, only the concern in his voice. It was a dream now, the leaving, or maybe staying, but out of the corner of her eye she could see Miranda and a couple at another table staring at her, and she remembered how she didn’t respond to her friend who told her to leave Jack. It came back now, the reason, and she could hear Jack’s voice, as if from a distance, calling her, but she couldn’t understand, she was curled up in a ball, beyond sadness, trying to shut out everything else and try to keep the moment, this feeling—maybe it wouldn’t end well, maybe it would, but seeing it to the end was the reason she had to stay. She knew that now, always did, really, even if she’d forgotten it for a little while.

He needed her, and if it was her mission to hang in there until and through rock bottom, well, so be it. At least she knew it, she wasn’t spinning around the planet chasing illusory happiness on the strength of alimony and gin, or counting on the realization of tightly held dreams of retirement bliss while the bulk of her life slipped away.

She thought of the road outside. Someone had told her that Rt. 20, in various incarnations through different states, stretched all the way to California. There had to be a lot of schools on Rt. 20, or whatever they called it in Ohio, Indiana, or other parts west. There had to be a lot of bars too, all looking for experienced help. It was enough hope for the future for her.

She’d keep the suitcase packed. But it wasn’t leaving without Jack’s to accompany it. Not today, anyway.

Ⓒ 2014 Damon Stewart